A Well-Designed Website Can Mean Money in the Bank

Although it’s probably a crucial part of your marketing strategy, do you view your website as a cost center, something that is necessary but a big draw on your bottom line? For large or complex businesses, a well-constructed website certainly requires an investment in time and resources as well as careful coordination between the constituencies that shape your business. Given the size and scope of many web design projects, it’s easy to see how they might be viewed as cost centers.

With proper strategic planning however, your company website could be a profit center.

Put the Profit in Your Planning

Any web design project worth its salt always begins with a key piece of strategic web design: development against stated goals. To accomplish this, your design team needs proper time, research and planning to ensure the website supports your company’s strategic initiatives. Good web planning doesn’t end there though. Your website also needs to effectively connect visitors to what they need and give them obvious and ample opportunities to take action.

Begin with your Brand in Mind

Your brand is how users recognize your company and should be a consistent presence throughout your website in everything from messaging to color schemes to logos. This creates a consistent experience for your customers and supports your brand as a mechanism which unites your company. Strong brand positioning gives the impression that your company is a well oiled machine where everything is in unison and functioning smoothly.

Set Website Goals that Drive Profits

Work with your design team to determine measurable goals that will aid your website in achieving long-term profitability. Doing so requires that you identify proper profit-drivers and ensure that they are easily visible on your website as well as appealing to your users.

Highlight your Main Products or Service Lines: The products or services which bring in the most revenue for your company should be the most visible thing on your website.

Share Information: Depending on your business, users should be able to find useful information that can assist them in determining what they need. From product descriptions to resource articles, your website should help visitors, not leave them with more questions.

Manage your Reputation: Your website is a prime location to drive a favorable market reputation, particularly when coupled with the use of social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter.

Focus on Ease and Efficiency: For retail websites, finding and purchasing products should be as simple as possible. Service-oriented websites that drive customers to a physical location should give them everything they need to easily locate your business and walk in knowing exactly what they need. Minimize users’ need to ask questions or hunt for what they’re looking for and you’ll get customers that come back.

Campaign, Campaign, Campaign: Use your website to promote contests, sales and other initiatives to drive customers to your business. Couple these with concurrent social media campaigns and you can practically assure that you will recruit new customers or repeat business.

Recruit the Finest and the Brightest: Using your website to attract qualified job applicants can expand your pool of potential employees, allowing you to recruit the best and add to the positive reputation that your website helps to build and support.

Good strategic planning and thoughtful design can make the initial cost and effort of launching your site well worth the effort. Collaborate as a team and keep your goals front and center at every stage of development and you will see the fruits of your efforts.